A Reading Life

American Hustle

We saw this scam movie at the cinema last week. There weren’t any huge surprises. I felt it was a bit long and would have been improved by tighter editing. For me any film that runs over two hours has to earn its keep. In the end this did, because the acting was superb. It has a brilliant opening: we watch as Christian Bale, who plays the conman, slowly and painstakingly contructs a comb-over with the help of a hairpiece, glue and hair-spray, highly appropriate as the whole film is all about cheating and illusion. Do they give Oscars for hair stylists? They ought to.In truth the hair styles were the stars of this movie. Did we really look like that in the seventies? The whole ambiance – the wallpaper, the clothes (those lapels!), the disco (strobe lighting and Donna Summer) – was so lovingly created that for me it carried the film.